All of a sudden, Australia is now considered a racist country (I'd have thought it was more to do to with anti-immigration hysteria, cronulla, camdem etc, but apparently not). It's due to a skit on Hey Hey it's Saturday, featuring five people dressed in blackface (and one in whiteface) portraying the Jackson5. Blackface, for the uninformed, is historically a highly racist form of humour using black stereotypes to grab some cheap laughs from the audience. In this case, of course, the outrage is laughable. Of course they're going to paint their faces black! They're pretending to be black singers! What are they supposed to do-go onstage in afros and pasty white skin? How crap would that look? Sometimes, it feels like Oz is adopting all the worst traits from all the other Western countries-the hard-right racism of the US, yet also the uptight-PCness of Britain. Gawd, now that's embarrasing.
And you know what? For all the outrage and horror, everybody seems to have missed this:
What's wrong? Not outragable enough?
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